France to start withdrawal from Mali in March

France plans to begin pulling troops out of Mali from March and will focus its
operations on flushing out Islamist rebels in the north of the country.

A man walks out of a buiding of the rebels of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) which has been destroyed by French air strikesPhoto: AFP

10:39PM GMT 05 Feb 2013

"We will continue to act in the north where some terrorist havens remain," Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister said.

"I think that from March, if everything goes according to plan, the number of French troops should fall."

Fance has deployed nearly 4,000 ground troops, as well as warplanes and armoured vehicles in its three-week-old Operation Serval that has broken the Islamist militants' 10-month grip on northern towns.

It is now due to gradually hand over to a UN-backed African force of some 8,000 troops, known as AFISMA, of which around 3,800 have already been deployed.

A UN diplomat said that the French are talking about another month or so of active engagement in Mali, with one aim being the interruption of supplies to the extremists.

The UN Security Council is likely to wait until the end of February, when the military action has hopefully ended, to adopt a new resolution authorising a UN peacekeeping force for Mali, he said.

The spokesman for the Malian military in Timbuktu, Capt. Samba Coulibaly, said there was no reason for the population to fear the withdrawal of French troops.

"With the size of the force we have here right now, we can maintain security in the town of Timbuktu," he said. "The departure of the French soldiers does not scare us, especially since their air force will still be present both in Timbuktu and Sevare. They control this entire zone and can intervene within a matter of minutes in order to carry out airstrikes as needed," he said.

French-led troops have killed hundreds of Islamist fighters in an operation to reclaim Mali's vast arid north, according to France's defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. The defence ministry said the Islamists died in French air strikes on vehicles transporting fighters and equipment, and in "direct combat in Konna and Gao", key central and northern towns.

France's sole fatality so far has been a helicopter pilot who was killed at the start of the military operation, while "two or three" soldiers have suffered light injuries, Mr Le Drian said.

Mali said 11 of its troops were killed and 60 wounded after the battle at Konna last month but has not since released a new death toll.

Mr Le Drian said the Malian army had taken "some prisoners, not many, who will have to answer to Malian courts and to international justice," adding that some of those detained were high-ranking militants.